Clever Marketing from Discover – I Actually Opened the Offer

Clever Marketing from Discover – I Actually Opened the Offer

As someone who holds a lot of credit cards, I rarely am lucky enough to receive mail (otherwise known as “mailers” or “targeted mailers”) offers to sign-up for a new card.

Typically, the banks and loyalty partners target those who don’t carry a lot of cards, or someone who hasn’t opened up a few recently.

Now, there are a lot of theories as to why and how people receive targeted mailers – and while this is all conjectural data, in my experience, I believe that I rarely receive offers because I have a few.

Occasionally I’ll receive offers from Bank of America for Alaska Airlines cards (not any personal, just business). More often than not, though, it’s just offers from Discover.

Typically, I open up the mailer just to peak, but end up tearing up the offer and throwing it away.

Why?

Discover doesn’t offer many credit cards and the ones they do focus on cash back. The Discover It card is actually a pretty good offer – they’ll match your spending at the end of the year at 1X to the dollar, unlimited. If you do a lot of unbonused spending, this offering can be pretty lucrative. The Discover It card also has rotating cash back categories like the favorite Chase Freedom – except that there’s no option to transfer your Cash Back to a higher level card (like the Sapphire Reserve) and then transfer to airline partners.

Most of my spending revolves around acquiring the sign-up bonuses or boosting points balance – so I usually don’t dedicate time to earning much cash back.

This weekend I received another mailer and I actually took the time to read the letter.

Here’s what it said:

Dear Mordechai

You’ve probably used to a lot of attention from my industry. And depending on how many credit cards you already have (and how often you use them), you’re probably used to ignoring us. And I can understand why.

… This mailer pretty much hit the nail on the head with my credit card situation.

Kudos to Discover for targeting churners.

Bottom Line

Did I sign up for the Discover It card? No.

But this mailer really made me think about Discover products, this specific product, and fun and creative ways to stand out in marketing and a see of products that can be very similar.

And sometimes, it pays off to open the mail – even if you think it will be junk!